BMW recalls 1 mn vehicles in North America over fire risks

BMW AG said Friday it is recalling about 1 million vehicles in North America for two separate issues involving fire risks and said it may expand the recalls to other countries.

One recall covers 670,000 2006-2011 US 3-series vehicles to address a wiring issue for heating and air conditioning system may overheat and could increase the risk of a fire.

The second recall covers 740,000 US 2007-2011 vehicles with a valve that could rust and lead to a fire in rare cases. The recall includes some 128i vehicles, 3-series, 5-series and X3, X5 and Z4 vehicles. BMW spokesman Michael Rebstock said the recalls have overlapping vehicles and cover about 1 million vehicles, nearly all in the United States and about 15,000 in Canada.
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German automakers agree to cut emissions, to update software in 5 mn cars

German carmakers agreed on Wednesday to update the software in 5.3 million diesel-powered cars to reduce emissions, Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt told reporters.

He said the carmakers would also self-fund incentives aimed at encouraging consumers to trade in diesel cars that were 10 years old and older for newer models with lower emissions.

Dobrindt and Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks both said the German government would do all it could to avoid driving bans for diesel cars in German cities.
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Self-driving cars are coming, but are we ready?

It’s been 60 years since the cover of Popular Mechanics magazine gave us the promise of flying cars. But our personal mobility options remain, today and for the foreseeable future, earthbound. Will the promise of self-driving cars be as elusive? In short, no. The dream of taking a road trip in which we pay more attention to a new book or movie than we do to the driving task is well within reach.

Still, we’re not there yet. And people are just beginning to ask a very important question: How might our nation’s roads and highways, and the driving done by we humans ourselves, need to change as autonomous vehicles become more ubiquitous? As researchers at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute who study many of the implications of self-driving cars, we find the answer in two important sets of realities – those we know, and those we don’t know.

Starting slowly, and in cities
For starters, we know that self-driving cars won’t become commonplace overnight. The vast majority of cars on the road now have no automation features or only very limited automation, like cruise control. You can find a few self-driving cars being tested on public roads now if you know where to look. But you won’t likely find many in a dealer showroom for at least 10 years.

Another factor that will further delay the widespread use of autonomous cars is that many people hang on to their cars as long as possible. The number of highly automated cars as a share of everything on the road will grow over time, but only relatively slowly.
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